NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump has threatened to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status after it rejected what it described as unlawful government demands to change its academic programmes or risk losing federal funding.
Beginning with Columbia University, the Trump administration has rebuked universities across the country over their handling of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled campuses last year.
Trump has called the protests anti-American and antisemitic, accused universities of peddling Marxism and “radical left” ideology, and promised to end federal grants and contracts to universities that do not agree to his administration’s demands.
Some professors, students and university presidents have said the protests are being unfairly conflated with antisemitism as a pretext for an unconstitutional attack on academic freedoms.
Columbia, a private school in New York City, agreed to negotiations after the Trump administration said last month it had terminated grants and contracts worth $400 million, mostly for medical and other scientific research.
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday, said demands the Trump administration made of the Massachusetts university — including an audit to ensure the “viewpoint diversity” of its students and faculty, and an end to all diversity, equity and inclusion programmes — were unprecedented “assertions of power, unmoored from the law” that violated constitutional free speech rights and the Civil Rights Act.
Like Columbia, he said Harvard had been working to fight antisemitism and other forms of discrimination on its campus while preserving academic freedoms and the right to protest.
Hours after Garber released his letter, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said it was freezing more than $2 billion in contracts and grants to Harvard, the country’s oldest and richest university. The administration did not respond to questions about which grants and contracts had been cut, and Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump, a Republican, said in a social media post on Tuesday he was mulling whether to seek to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continued pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”
He did not say how he would do this. Under the US tax code, most universities are exempt from federal income tax because they are deemed to be “operated exclusively” for educational purposes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump wanted to see Harvard apologise for what she called “antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.”
She accused Harvard and other schools of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal funding based on race or national origin.
Under Title VI, federal funds can be terminated only after a lengthy investigation and hearings process and a 30-day notification to Congress — which has not happened at Columbia or Harvard.
